Hi @keif, welcome back! 
As @jamesg31 mentioned on this topic, this is to prevent unsafe characters from being on the url. That being said, we understand that there are times when we would like the freedom to turn this off. As you saw on the topic you linked, this an existing internal request that we are happy to collect more feedback and +1s on (I added your feedback to it).
On the meantime, did this workaround work for you?